31. Rotuma

Alan Howard

[Published in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol.
9, Australia and the Pacific Islands, edited by Adrienne L. Kaeppler
and J. W. Love. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1998]

Near the intersection of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, Rotuma
borrowed heavily from its neighbors--in music as in language. Rotumans
have long claimed that all of their songs and dances but the class
known as tautoga are imports (Gardiner
1898:488). By blending borrowed and indigenous traits, Rotumans have
generated a unique musical repertory.

A volcanic island of approximately 43 square kilometers, Rotuma rises
to about 215 meters. It lies 500 kilometers north of Viti Levu, from
where, in the late 1990s, biweekly flights were scheduled; government
and private shipping provided additional, though irregular, transportation
between Fiji ports and Rotuma.

Mythology attributes the creation of the island, and the founding
of the society, to Raho, supposedly a Samoan chief. Ma'afu, a Tongan
chief from Niuafo'ou, reportedly conquered Rotuma (Churchward 1937:255).
Legend portray his as an oppressor, killed by rebelling Rotumans; nevertheless
the title Maraf, an obvious cognate, remains the premier title.

In 1791, H.M.S. Pandora became the first European ship to visit
Rotuma. Christianity arrived in 1839, when John Williams assigned two
Samoan teachers to the island; but they were unsuccessful, and in 1841,
Tongan Wesleyans replaced them. In 1847, Roman Catholic missionaries
arrived. Sectarian antagonisms mounted, culminating in 1878 in a war
won by the numerically dominant side, the Methodists. Continuing unrest
led the paramount chiefs of the seven districts to petition Britain
for annexation. Since 1881, the year of cession, Rotuma became administratively
part of Fiji. In the late 1990s, the population on the island was about
twenty-six hundred; but three times as many Rotumans lived on Viti
Levu, mainly in Suva.

Performative contexts

At special occasions, no major gathering occurs without performances
for which groups compose (ha'i) celebratory
songs and dances. Depending on the size of a festival (kato'aga),
performances range from an hour of informal singing around a few guitars
(kita) and ukuleles (ukalele),
to daylong sessions in which a rehearsed groups formally sing and dance.
At domestic ceremonies, such as weddings or the raising of gravestones
(höt'ak hafu), songs honor featured
persons. When a group from one village or district performs at another
location, it presents songs to honor its hosts: texts reference local
chiefs, pertinent events, and outstanding features of the community
or landscape. Annual events (such as Cession Day, and the Methodist
Church Conference), and specially scheduled events (a high dignitary's
visit, the dedication of a new building), spur groups to polish their
performances. In Suva in 1974, at the dedication of the Churchward
Chapel, groups presented songs in praise of C. Maxwell Churchward (Methodist
missionary), for whom the congregation named the building; songs also
praised the architect, and likened the structure to a spaceship.

On some occasions (like the Methodist Church Conference), performances
occur within a competitive framework. Judges rate presentations by
unity, degree of difficulty, and appearance (costume, stance, expression).
At these performances, audiences enthusiastically receive successful
innovations.

During celebrations, public musical performances occur where convenient:
for a religious occasion, in or next to a church; for a wedding, near
the bride's home; for a feast, at the host's house. To receive guests,
some villages maintain open public spaces (marä'e),
where they erect sheds for protection from rain and sun. Informal singing
or dancing may precede the serving of kava and food; but formal presentations
routinely follow feasting, with performers facing the high chiefs and
featured persons.

Music also forms an integral part of playtimes (av
mane'a), periods set aside for socializing. Most notable is
the four-to-six-week period during December and January, when few
people work. On the grounds of selected houses, youths sing and dance
to the accompaniment of guitars and ukuleles. In reward, residents
sprinkle them with perfumed powders and spray them with cologne;
if adequate supplies are on hand, the hosts also dispense soft drinks
and food.

In premissionary times, nubile youths frequented houses set aside
for dancing and played beach games (mane'a hune'ele)
including singing and dancing, which provided culturally controlled
frames for courtship. Missionaries, fearing immorality, curbed such
gatherings. In the current version of beachgames, young people gather
informally around a guitar, often under the auspices of the church,
to perform hymns and other religious songs. In the 1980s, activity
began to give way to passivity--listening to cassette recordings. Guitars,
ukuleles, and cassette are not available for purchase on the island,
but returning sojourners bring them home.

Composers are known as manatu; with lead
singers, they are also known as purotu.
Several persons have attained local reputations as composers. Some
older people keep musical texts in notebooks, which, to consult while
planning performances, they sometimes bring to meetings. A few Rotuman
bands (päne) have composed and recorded
songs in popular Polynesian styles.

No survey of indigenous musical instruments remains, though Rotumans
said in 1932 they had once had a nose flute and a panpipe (MacGregor
n.d.). By the mid-1900s, rhythmic beating on a pile of folded mats
had become the only normative accompaniment to tautoga;
it may have replaced striking a log idiophone (Eason 1951:23). Metallic
idiophones, made from bicycle bells, bullet casings, or other hollow
metal containers and struck with a nail or metal strip, accompany a
new kind of hymn, mak pel from English bell).

Indigenous songs

At the time of European intrusion, Rotuman music included recitations,
dances with paddles, and tautoga.

Recitations

Mosese Kaurasi (1991) distinguishes three types of Rotuman recitation:
texts composed for dances and songs with movements; texts intoned before
battles or wrestling matches; and temo,
performed during a chief's funeral, or at a reception for a visiting
chief.

Songs with movements commemorate special events or occasions, including
war-provoking incidents, the deaths of notable persons, successful
seafaring ventures, and festivals involving two or more communities.
Their sentiments vary circumstantially, in moods from solemn to exultant.
In 1926, the Reverend Kitione, a Wesleyan minister, composed the following
text to mark the end of a festive gathering involving groups from Faguta
and Motusa (Kaurasi 1991:143).

Hanis 'e soro te Faguta

Hauen ava la a'u'ua

Fufui ne is Moitaua

Orsio ka hanua la malua

Pity the dance group from Faguta

The time to stop has come,

For the flock of Moitaua Point

To rest and yarn as the sun sets.

To mobilize sentiment and muster courage (mäeva),
the songs and dances performed before battles were textually belligerent
and kinetically aggressive. (Kaurasi 1991:147).

Kaf se' po'

Hula hula majei tato

'Apsi' la' kel hula

To' filo'ua la' herua

Clap your folded arm,

And wrestle in pairs till darkness falls

Stroll to watch the wrestling match

And witness the snapping off of wrestler's heads

Temo praise deceased individuals, respected
chiefs, and special places. Before Christianization, mourners sang
them at funerals. Leaders chose a tempo and
started the singing; they sat close to a few others, facing inward,
and the rest of the company sat around them. The leaders performed
in sets of four: the first three temo were
slow and subdued; the fourth, quick and bright, with clapping. The
chorus accompanied by humming (verea'aki)
a drone.

The melodies of temo usually have a range
no larger than a perfect fourth, plus indefinitely-pitched notes wailed
in high registers. By about a semitone, singers depress the pitches
of notes, and then slide back up again. Temo end
in a downward slide, with diminishing volume. To signal the end of
a song, the leaders repeat the first line. In 1932, their volume was "so
low that one feels that those outside the circle are not supposed to
hear or understand the words. The clapping too is very soft. The best
chanting of temos resembles the singing of toothless old men" (MacGregor
n.d.). By 1960, temo had fallen out of
use.

Dances with paddles

People performed dances with paddles (mak paki)
within the ritual cycle associated with the offices of sau and mua,
spiritual representatives of the unified polity. Because the dances
originated in pagan worship, they fell into disuse after the 1870s,
when Christianization had become complete.

In 1865, a missionary witnessed a paddle-dance of "mostly elderly
men": each performer held a paddle, and

The sau and the mueta [mua] stood
together, all the rest squatted down near them. Rising up, they commenced
a song, raising the legs alternately, and brandishing the paddles.
The song over, they rushed, one half one way, and one half the other
way, and meeting in the centre of the square, stood in two lines, the
sau and the mueta being in the centre of the front line. A man sat
before a native drum to beat time, and lead the chanting. All joined,
moving the legs, and gently brandishing the paddles, now giving them
an oscillating movement on the front of the head, and again striking
them gently with the tips of the fingers of the left hand. At intervals,
the back line dividing into two went round and joined again in front
of the line, where stood the sau and the mueta, which line in its turn
divided, and passed to the front. In each song these evolutions were
gone through five or six times. The whole may have lasted about half
an hour (Fletcher 1866; letter, 4 November 1865).

Severed from their original context by the 1880s, dances with paddles
continued in secular setting, where they highlighted special celebrations.

Reserved for large festivals, these songs and dances embody late-twentieth-century
Rotuman taste. Men and women arrange themselves in rows, men on one
side, women on the other (figure 25). Movements occur in synchrony:
men's are vigorous and coarse; women's, restrained and delicate.

Costumes include lavalavas (ha'fali),
usually of uniform color and design: women wear theirs down to their
ankles; men to just below the knee. Over the lavalavas, from the waist,
hang ti-leaf skirts (titi). Dancers adorn
themselves with garlands (tefui) made
from young coconut-palm leaves, supplemented by sweet-smelling flowers,
tied together with colorful wool. Men's skirts and garlands are more
elaborately decorated than women's. Women usually let their hair down
as a "mark of respect and deference" (Hereniko 1991:133).

In form, a complete tautoga is a suite
of pieces in three types: from one to three sua, one or twotiap
hi, and two or more tiap forau; in a complete performance, at least
one example of each type occurs. For sua and tiap
forau, elders provide accompaniment: with wooden sticks, several
people beat on a pile of folded mats; they begin each dance by introducing
the song, and take responsibility for sustaining the rhythm and the
tempo. In sua and the tiap
hi'i, each of the first three rows of dancers takes its turn
in front; after completing a set of verses, the dancers in the first
row drop back, and the row behind them comes forward (Hereniko 1991:128-130).

Figure 25. Rotumans perform a tautoga.

Photo by Alan Howard, 1960.

Sua

For sua, dancers stand in place: men,
with their feet apart; women, with their feet together. The basic movement
involves lifting the hands from the sides, clasping them together in
front of the waist, and releasing them to the sides. Dancers repeatedly
bend and straighten their legs.

Sua normally consist of four-verse stanzas,
whose texts allude to the occasion. The music consists of a single
phrase in duple meter, repeated many times. One recorded performance
figure 26a) ended during the twentieth statement of the phrase. The
performers sing a melody in parallel fifths, with women on the upper
part. Sometimes (as at the beginning of figure 26b), singers sound
other notes, creating three- or four-note harmonies.

Tiap hi'i

After sua come tiap
hi, dances of two kinds. In one, hi
tägtäg 'languid drone', women sing hi'ie,
hi'ie, hi'ie, hi'ie, while the men grunt to the effect of hü'ü,
hü'ü, hü'ü, hü'ü (figure 26c).
The performers focus on a major triad: men sing the root, women the
third and fifth. A subdominant triad serves as an auxiliary. The
performers clap their hands on downbeats. The transcribed performance
has thirty-seven statements of the indicated phrase; after the nineteenth,
the tempo begins to increase sharply. In the other kind of tiap
hi'i, the hi' sasap 'sustained
drone', the men drag out their hü.
In both subgenres, some of the singers breathe while others vocalize,
so the performance spins a continuous thread of sound.

Performances of the tiap hi'i mark the
contrast between feminine constraint and masculine freedom. Women stand
in place, as in the sua; they confine
their movements to graceful, subtle motions of the hands and arms.
Men may jump from side to side, or in circles. In one version, men
maintain a textless drone, while women sign four or eight verses, recounting
legends.

Unlike sua and tiap
hi'i, which have a temperate character, tiap
forau feature the exuberance of yelping and clowning; spectators
may spontaneously join in. During the dance, the back row splits:
the men come down one side of the group, the women down the other,
until they meet in front, replacing the first row; the process continues
until each row has had its turn in front. The texts usually acknowledge
distinguished personages (especially the chiefs acting as hosts),
and praise people whose labors have contributed to the event (Hereniko
1991:130-131). Many tiap forau are in
duple meter, transcribable as 2/4 time; some are in a triply compound
meter, transcribable as 6/8 time.

Twentieth-century developments

Wesleyan and Roman Catholic missionaries introduced hymns, which are
central in Rotuman sacred contexts, and even occur in secular ones.
In 1927-28, C.M. Churchward prepared the Rotuman Wesleyan hymnal, Him
Ne Rot Uesli; others revised it in 1986-89. It contains 405
Rotuman hymns in sol-fa notation.

Performances of hymns take two styles: one is based on four-part harmony;
in the other, mak pel, a struck metal
idiophone keeps time. Gatherings of the Methodist Youth Fellowship
sing religious songs in English and Rotuman, sometimes between skits
on biblical themes.

Rotumans have adopted foreign styles of singing and dancing as they
have come to know them through travel, films, radio (mostly Fiji stations)
and video. In the 1990s, many Rotumans knew of the Samoan ma'ulu'ulu (via
its Tongan analog) and sasa, the Fijian vakamalolo, and
dances from Tahiti, Kiribati, and elsewhere. Pan-Polynesian
harmonized music is popular, with Rotuman words often substituted
for the originals. The favorite foreign musical genre is Rarotongan,
introduced by Rarotongans who in the late 1940s visited the island
for months. Rotumans associate Rarotongan-style dances with playtimes.

References cited

Eason, William. 1951. A Short History of Rotuma. Suva: Government
Printing Department.